Conventionally, commercial printing agents who generate prints in accordance with requests from customers such as individual users, corporations, and the like exist. Such printing agent provides a service for generating prints on the basis of print data (original) and orders including a print style, the number of copies, due date, and the like from the customer, and making a delivery to the customer. Such printing agent provides the service using a large-scale apparatus such as a long-established offset reproduction printing press or the like.
Nowadays, with the advent of high-speed and high-image quality electrophotographic and ink-jet printing apparatuses, a business category of commercial printing called “copy service”, “printing service”, “Print On Demand (POD) center”, or the like is present. A print request is made to such printing agent in such a manner that the user mails or directly brings a document recorded on paper sheets or in a digital or optical recording medium (FD, MO, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, or the like) and a print order sheet that describes the number of copies to be printed, bookbinding method, due date, and the like of that document into the printing company who provides the service. In this specification, the request based on a document and print order sheet is called a document entry.
Also, a system that can issue/receive print orders on-line via the Internet or intranet has been in practical use. For example, in “DotDoc.Web” available from Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd., the user accesses a home page provided by the printing agent from the self terminal, fills in required items such as orderer information (receiving address or the like), print style, the number of copies, and the like of a print request form, and submits the print request form together with a document file, thus placing the print order of that document. In response to this order, the printing agent side generates data corresponding to the aforementioned print order sheet on the basis of the request contents from the user, and forms a schedule of the print process. Print and bookbinding processes are executed by a printer connected to a work computer, and generated prints are delivered to the customer in accordance with the schedule, thus ending the service.
The printing agent which executes the print process requested by the user must complete the print process with stable quality in time for the designated due date. Also, in a large-scale printing center, a plurality of operators must parallelly process many print requests (orders) using a large variety of printing apparatuses and work computers. In such system, a technique that allows to access the contents of a print request (copy request) by operating each work computer is available.
However, in the conventional system, for example, when the right of access to the workflow is to be given in only a specific work step of the work schedule that processes the print order, or when a given work step is done at a remote site that cannot be managed, the access right cannot be controlled.
That is, under the existing circumstances it is difficult to make a secure setting that obscures a part specialized to a given work step from other work steps in the work schedule.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to protect the security of information required in a given work step against other work steps.